inequality

CO2 emissions, 2003 (tonnes per capita):

Luxemborg - 24.3
USA - 20.0
UK - 9.5
Bangladesh - 0.24
Ethiopia - 0.06

Between 1947 and 1973 the income of the poorest fifth of US families grew 116 per cent, higher than any other group. From 1974 to 2004 it grew by just 2.8 per cent. In the UK, the share of national income received by the bottom 10 per cent fell from 4.2 per cent in 1979 to 2.7 per cent in 2002.

"What notion of economics or ethics justifies the fact that it would take the average family more than 35,000 years to earn as much as the top hedge fund managers earn in one year?"

What do you think the following profitable corporations paid in actual total federal income taxes in that period: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo, and Yahoo? Nothing!

CTJ [Citizens for Tax Justice] reports that "from 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: $2.5 billion."

CTJ documents that "not a single one of the companies paid anything close to the 35 percent statutory tax rate. In fact, the 'highest tax' company on our list, ExxonMobil, paid an effective three-year tax rate of only 14.2 percent…and over the past two years, Exxon Mobil's net tax on its $9.9 billion in U.S. pretax profits was a minuscule $39 million, an effective tax rate of 0.4 percent."

... Should you have any doubts that the corporate state is in firm control of your government, try this test: If you paid a single dollar in federal income tax in any of the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, you paid more than the giant General Electric (GE) company. In that period GE made $7.722 billion in U.S. profit, paid no taxes and received $4.737 billion from the IRS. What do you think the following profitable corporations paid in actual total federal income taxes in that period: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo, and Yahoo? Nothing!

A report last week by HSBC Holdings Plc, drawing on a YouGov Plc survey, concluded that the richest British households -- defined as those earning 100,000 pounds ($161,000) a year or more -- planned to increase their spending by 7.8 percent this year, even though some of that will be financed by saving less. Not much sign of austerity there.

The ordinary British family isn’t doing so well. The median pay increase was 2.2 percent in the last three months, less than inflation, which is running at 3.7 percent. In effect, the average person is getting poorer in real terms -- but those at the top are doing fine...

Of course, inequality has been rising for some time. In the U.K., the Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of disparity in incomes, rose from 28 percent in 1983 to 34 percent in 2008/9, according to the Office for National Statistics. A score of 1 means incomes are evenly distributed, while 100 means just one person holds all of a nation’s wealth. Since 2005, it has been relatively stable. Now inequality is rising again.